Chemistry Principal Scientist

Substrate is spinning out of Automata, the UK lab automation company that has built the workcell platform our labs run on. Our four co-founders are Mostafa ElSayed (CEO and founder of Automata), Oli Hoy (formerly VP Customer Experience at Automata), Alexey Morgunov (AI Scientist co-founder, leading the intelligence software product), and a Founding Biology Lead joining shortly. We are aiming to have ramped up to 32 people by the end of Q1 2027.

We are funded in parallel by a combination of venture funding and government grants. We are not a cloud lab and we are not a CRO. We are an autonomous lab platform with closed-loop integration available as one operating mode for foundation model partners.

Most senior chemistry roles at venture-backed companies sit either inside an established platform that has already committed to chemistry, or inside a pharma R&D group running an internal chemistry pipeline. This is neither. You will be the person who decides whether Substrate commits to chemistry as a standalone vertical, by doing the work to figure out what shape that vertical should take and whether the case for it holds.

Some chemists find that openness energising: the chance to scope a strategic bet, shape it from the ground up, and either lead the build-out or hand it off to a more senior Head of Chemistry. If the standalone bet does not greenlight, chemistry expertise is still needed across our other verticals, so the work continues, just inside a different scope. Worth knowing in advance whether this kind of openness fits how you want to work.

You are a chemist who is excited about an open scoping mandate rather than a defined assay portfolio. You enjoy research-mode work as much as hands-on bench work. You write good assessments and can hold a value-proposition argument together while you go gather the evidence to test it.

You have deep chemistry training and a working sense of the chemistry-automation industry: what existing platforms can do, where their gaps are, and where customer quality requirements sit above what current instrumentation delivers. You can have a credible conversation with a pharma R&D chemist about what they actually use, or with a foundation-model researcher about the chemical-space coverage their model needs.

You are comfortable working largely autonomously, with Alexey as your weekly thought partner and otherwise self-directed. You are comfortable with the three-fork future of this role and would rather know all three paths are real than have one of them sold to you.

We pay competitively against the London market for PhD-level chemists at venture-backed companies, calibrated to seniority and to the specific scope of this role. We will discuss numbers with serious candidates after first conversations.

Options on the standard four-year vest with a one-year cliff. The specific quantum reflects the scoping nature of the hire and will be discussed with serious candidates.

Apply via Ashby with whatever you think shows your work best: a CV, a published paper or thesis chapter you are proud of, a piece of writing on a chemistry-or-adjacent topic, a value-proposition argument you have made for an idea you thought was worth pursuing. We read everything that comes in.

Our process is three stages. An initial conversation with Alexey to understand what you want from the role and what we want from it. Followed by a technical session covering your chemistry background, your read on the chemistry-automation industry and the foundation-model landscape, and how you would shape the strategy. Finally, an in-person founder-team session at our King’s Cross site covering scope, terms, the conditional nature of the role, and any final questions. We aim to move fast on candidates we are excited about; expect roughly two to three weeks end to end.

If you are not sure whether you are a fit, send a note anyway. The most useful conversations we have had so far have been with people who were not sure.

Substrate is an equal opportunity employer. We make hiring decisions on merit, scope-fit, and the strength of the working relationship we expect to build with each hire. Applications welcome from candidates of any background.

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